At a packed Town Board Meeting on the afternoon of Tuesday, December 10, despite the impassioned and reasoned opposition of dozens of residents, the Town Board voted 3-1-1 to pass the Melville Town Center Overlay District.

This new zoning will allow developers to build high density apartment buildings with corporate landlords taking money out of our community. It will allow intense 24/7 use of water and creation of waste on top of a sensitive aquifer recharge area.

In an unplanned fashion, this new zoning will add thousands of new residents to Melville, increasing the Melville population significantly with no measures in place to support such an increase.

The county is set to grant millions in tax abatements to these developers, which will cut school budgets and consequently increase property taxes. There are no measures in place to offset such tax abatements.

The new zoning will introduce thousands more cars in Melville, spilling from the already congested Route 110 onto surrounding residential streets. There are no measures in place to manage traffic circulation issues or parking.

In a previous Melville plan, which did not pass, a professional planning firm created an extensive impact study with detailed suggestions of measures to manage current and predicted traffic issues — and that plan included only 300 new residences!

For some reason, Board has not referenced or made use of any of the data or suggestions in that plan: their “impact study” has no data, only opinions, assertions, and cherry-picked quotes.

In the town’s cobbled-together environmental impact statement, they claimed that adding 1,500 new residences with thousands more people and cars to our community would have LITTLE TO NO IMPACT on our infrastructure, our roads, or our aquifer! In fact, they dismissed all concerns about our aquifer with a quote from a scientist who is neither qualified nor authorized to advise officials about aquifers!

Finally, accounts of conflicts of interest have cast doubt into the legitimacy of the entire procedure. When introducing the proposal, Councilman Sal Ferro did not disclose his financial ties to one of the developers invested in the plan. Therefore Ferro should have recused himself from ALL discussions about the proposal. 

But he never did — as Council member Mari made clear in her Dec 10 statement when she cited her conversations with Ferro as a deciding factor in her vote for the zone change. 

Ferro has a history of disregard for the law. He has openly scoffed about state laws during town board meetings, and when he ran his construction company, he made a practice of not obtaining the required permits from the town. 

Ferro has announced that he has been cleared of all conflicts of interest — by a procedure shrouded in secrecy. The issue of Ferro’s failure to disclose his tie to the developer when the plan was introduced was not addressed — and ethics reviewer who made this conclusion was a town hire with a history of questionable ethics himself. 

Many are not opposed to the concept of a town center in Melville, but the Board should not have proceeded without a proper ethics inquiry — as called for by Council member Lupinacci — and a comprehensive independent impact study to ensure the safety of our water and the quality of life for current and new residents alike. 

So what’s next? Lawsuits are being looked into, and this petition is more important than ever. Please share it with your community contacts!

We will update you as new developments unfold.

Thanks for your support as always!